Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 3)

Re:Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our intern... by rmason on Friday September 09, 2011 @12:52PM (#2978794)

There's a real nugget of wisdom in listening to angry customers. So many customers will say something nice to not offend.

When someones passionate and says you've got it wrong and here's where - you should pay careful attention. Perhaps 20% are trolls you can safely ignore but the rest will tell you what people were thinking but were too polite to say.

So many fellow entrepreneurs tell me breathlessly about this person or other who liked their startup. I always ask did anyone say they didn't like it? Usually they say sure but I just ignored them - big mistake.

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Re:Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our intern... by mluiten on Friday September 09, 2011 @01:29PM (#2978971)

I believe Erik Ries said much of the same thing in a talk I saw once (can't find it now, of course). The gist of it was that nobody likes to get angry, and angry customers are therefor especially important because they actually care enough about your product to get angry at you for screwing it up.

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Re:Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our intern... by n9com on Friday September 09, 2011 @01:35PM (#2978997)

if people complain, you know you have something worth complaining about :)

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Re:Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our intern... by wyldstallyn26 on Friday September 09, 2011 @01:04PM (#2978867)

You've kind of hit the nail on the head right there. We made precisely the same mistake with CopterKid, believing it to be virtually faultless in every regard. It's all about being sensible enough to decipher a well-wished constructive/negative criticism from a downright trollish one.

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